#NeverAgain Students Furious After Broward County Implements 'Policy' to Combat Shootings
In the wave of hashtags we’ve seen over the past few years, #NeverAgain might rank up there with the most self-indulgent.
People who have not a whit of knowledge regarding how firearms work are now convinced they can make public policy to stop school shootings, mostly regarding banning so-called “assault weapons.”
The hashtag has gained particular momentum in Broward County, Florida, where the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting took place last month. While all sympathy goes out to those who were affected by it, their grasp of policy to make schools safer seems to consist of two words: ban guns.
So, when the superintendent of Broward County Public Schools announced the new policy to prevent school violence, effective at the end of spring break, it got a whole lot of #NeverAgain students pretty riled up. Patricia Mazzei, The New York Times’ Miami bureau chief, tweeted about it:
Robert W. Runcie, the superintendent of Broward County Public Schools, announces that only clear backpacks will be allowed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after Spring Break, which is next week. The school will provide each student with a backpack at no cost.
— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) March 21, 2018
Each student will also be given an ID badge. Students and staff will be required to wear the badges at all times.
— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) March 21, 2018
The Daily Wire collected some of the better Twitter freakouts over this one — including from some of the pro-gun control students that the media has chosen to make famous.
Clear backpacks don't do anything except make us look stupid. We want to be safe, not uncomfortable. The only thing that can really have an impact on our safety is gun control
— carly (@carlynovell) March 21, 2018
Great. Because clear backpacks are gonna fix everything. I appreciate the attempt, but I’d rather have common since gun laws than a clear backpack.
#NeverAgain #EnoughIsEnough https://t.co/1HRudeSOib
— Lauren Hogg (@lauren_hoggs) March 21, 2018
https://twitter.com/lexforchange/status/976651034339758085
This is absolutely ridiculous at this point like schools are slowly but surely becoming prisons (I am aware most schools in primarily high crime rate areas look like prisons) but school is supposed to be a place to learn and feel comfortable.
— natasha (@sighnatasha) March 22, 2018
also clear backpacks are a mistake because now if someone asks for a pencil i HAVE to give it to them. they’ll see right through my bag and my lies. gross
— sara gio (@phirecrackers) March 22, 2018
Marjory Stoneman Douglas Penitentiary
— Chad (@chad_williams05) March 22, 2018
Now, let me first state I’m not entirely in disagreement with what some of these students are saying. Without being provided evidence or case studies that show these policies work, clear backpacks and ID badges — all at taxpayer expense — sounds like an exceptionally dumb and expensive example of security theater that makes it look like those responsible for student security are doing something without actually doing anything.
This all being said, most of what the members of the #NeverAgain troupe are proposing isn’t wholly different. Believing that banning certain guns will stop school shootings — as opposed to a modernization of the background check system, paying greater attention to mental health red flags and making schools harder targets (which would include hiring trained armed security — is mostly an act of making people feel better as opposed to doing anything productive.
Most of these #NeverAgain individuals won’t recognize the irony, and they don’t have to. In particular, those who experienced and survived this horrifying event shouldn’t really ever be expected to, given the horror that they witnessed. (However, one can certainly object to the cynical way in which they’re constantly trotted out as sages on public policy.)
For the rest of us, the new initiative by the Broward County Public Schools superintendent should be an object lesson in why doing anything to look like you’re doing something in the wake of a disaster will almost always backfire.
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